I am a Tombstone Tourist: someone who loves to wander cemeteries. I find it akin to visiting a museum: an opportunity to enjoy rarely seen sculpture, intricate carvings, and amazing architecture, all in a tranquil outdoor setting. This blog is about cemetery culture, art, history, issues of death, and genealogy - subjects of current relevance. I usually find something that intrigues me and makes me want to dig deeper. Care to join me? Read on...

Friday, January 4, 2013

A Poet For His Times - T.S. Eliot

He
was considered one of the most compelling poets of his time, if not one of the
most important poets of the Twentieth Century.

T.S. Eliot

Thomas
Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis to Henry Ware Eliot
and Charlotte Champe Stearns Eliot.He was a sickly child and spent much of his time reading. He began
writing poetry when he was fourteen. His first poem, A Fable For Feasters, was published in the Smith Academy Record in
February 1905.That same year, his
poem Song was published, along
with three short stories.

Harvard Writeup

Ezra Pound

Eliot attended Harvard from 1906 to 1909, graduated, and worked for a year as a
philosophy assistant.He then
spent a year in Paris, returning to Harvard in 1911 to study Indian philosophy
and Sanskrit. In 1914, he left on a traveling scholarship to Europe, just as WW
I began.He began attending Oxford
that autumn.Eliot loved London
and met several influential people there, including Ezra Pound who promoted Eliot at
literary events and gatherings.Pound called Eliot a poet “worth watching.”

Vivienne Haigh-Wood

Vivienne Eliot

In
June 1915, Eliot married Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a dancer, in London.The marriage was unhappy, partially due
to Vivienne’s health issues and the fact she spent most of her time away,
trying to recuperate.In 1933,
Eliot arranged a legal separation from Vivienne.In 1938, she was committed to the Northumberland House
Mental Hospital where she died in 1947.

Eliot
later said that one of his most famous poems, The Waste Land, published in 1922, was the result of his negative
state of mind while married to Vivienne. The poem sought to juxtapose beauty
and ugliness with monotony and horror.

The
Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock was
the poem that made him famous.Written in 1910, it was published in 1915 by Poetry magazine.Composed in the style of the Modernist movement, the poem is written in
a stream of consciousness style, allowing the reader into the mind of J. Arthur
Prufrock as he searches for love.The Times Literary Supplement reviewed it in 1917 but did not give it high marks.

Plaque Outside of Firm

Eliot & Farber Staff

In
1925, Eliot joined the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer, which later became
Faber and Faber.In later years he
became a director of the firm.He
worked there until his death.

Eliot

Eliot
loved living in London, and at the age of 39, became a British citizen. That
same year, 1927, he also converted from the Unitarianism religion and entered
the Anglican Church of England.His writing took on a religious bent from this time on.

Eliot
was also known for his poems, Gerontion, The Hollow Men, and Ash
Wednesday, along with seven
plays.In 1948, he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature for what he viewed as his masterpiece, Four Quartets, written in 1943.

In
1949, King George VI bestowed upon him the Order of Merit, one of England’s highest awards.

Eliot
received many other awards including a Tony Award in 1950 for Best Play, The
Cocktail Party, the Legion
d’Honneur in 1951, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Lyndon B. Johnson in
1964, and two posthumous Tony Awards, in 1983, for his poems used in the musical
Cats.

Eliot and wife Valerie

In
January 1957, Eliot married Valerie Fletcher, his private secretary, and finished
out his life in a more tranquil, domestic relationship.

Plaque in Church

T.S. Eliot

T.S.
Eliot died on January 4, 1965 of emphysema.He was 76.Eliot was cremated and his ashes interred in the church at St Michael’s
in East Coker, England. East Coker was the village that his ancestors had left
to go to America. A plaque hangs on the church wall with a quote from the Four
Quartets: “In my beginning is
my end. In my end is my beginning."

About Me

I
love wine and will take any chance to sip, savor and share it! Hence, Joy’s JOY
of Wine http://joysjoyofwine.blogspot.com,
a weekly blog about all things wine. I've been in the industry for 15
years as a winery owner, marketing director, speaker, writer, wine judge, and
100% vino girl!

I'm
also a professional freelance magazine and book writer uncorking articles about
wine, food, history, travel, cemetery history and culture. My interest in
cemetery culture led to another great, or maybe I should say
"grave" gig, my weekly blog: A Grave Interest http://agraveinterest.blogspot.com where I get to travel around the country and speak about cemetery topics for genealogy, history and
education conferences.

I suppose you could say that wine is my
passion, and cemeteries are my diversion ... into another world.

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